Director:
Ingmar Bergman
Writer:
Ingmar Bergman
The film is framed through the account of Alma (Liv Ullman), who addresses the audience directly while sitting at a picnic table. She tells of her husband's disappearance, which is explored in a flashback constructed of his diaries and her words.
Johan Borg (von Sydow) is a painter who is regularly approached by odd and suspicious people. He confides to his young, pregnant wife Alma (Ullman) that he believes them to be demons, and that his insomnia is growing worse. On the nights when Johan can't sleep, Alma stays awake by his side through the nights, especially during the vargtimmen ("The Hour of the Wolf"), during which, Johan says, most births and deaths occur. Johan begins to give names to the figures who approach him, including the Bird-Man, the Insects, the Meat-Eaters, the Schoolmaster (with pointers in his trousers), and The Lady With a Hat. Throughout the film, Alma expresses her belief that two people who love each other, and spend their lives with each other, will eventually become alike. (See Persona.)
It is implied to the audience that these figures represent Johan's shames, traumas, and vices. Johan's wife talks about wanting to grow old with him, and that night, a 216-year-old woman approaches him, taunting him about age. In one scene, he recounts to his wife meeting a small boy tanning himself on a rock. As the nude boy approached Johan, he "realized" it was a demon representing homosexuality (and sexual experimentation in his youth), and violently smashed the child's face against a stone before tossing him into the ocean to drown. Alma reacts to the story with shock, and sinks into despair. Johan tries to persuade her to leave so he might kill himself, but the couple are approached by a baron, von Merkens (Josephson), who lives in a nearby castle. The painter and his wife visit them and their surreal household: a castle, where Johan's ex-girlfriend Veronica lies waiting on a table. Swarms of men dress Johan in make-up and women's clothing in preparation for a sexual encounter with her, while Veronica hands Alma her husband's diary and tells her "I have bought myself a sizeable stake in your husband." Veronica taunts her by showing her bruises on her pelvis, "perpetual sources of reinvogarated enthusiasm".
Johan panics, and flees into underbrush. In the last act of the film, Alma searches the forest for her husband, only to find his mangled body. In the final moments, she addresses the camera, "Is it true that a woman who lives a long time with a man eventually winds up being like that man? I mean, she loves him, and tries to think like him, and see like him? They say it can change a person. I mean to say, if I had loved him much less, and not bothered so of everything about him, could I have protected him better?", believing that her love of Johan spread his demons to her, so that she could not protect him.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063759/
